Key Takeaways From My Last Project Management Challenge

I’ve had to protect my team in the past, particularly when their time or focus was at risk. I’ve seen this happen at companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, where mandates and initiatives would stack during the same timeframe. While each initiative alone might have been reasonable, together they overburdened the teams. Those compiled costs may be invisible to the folks driving the individual mandates. You may have seen teams get overwhelmed by a major release, a review cycle, and bi-annual business planning all at once. This type of time management stress is usually manageable, but there are times when teams can be stretched too thin and compromise morale and quality. When you witness this, I believe it’s crucial to step in. You will hear from your team and you need to be close enough to the issues to decide how to respond. This can be tricky for a leader: on one hand, you want to ensure your team can succeed; on the other, you’re part of the broader leadership and need to support the decisions being made. Sometimes, you have very little room to maneuver. In those cases, I find it most effective to have a private conversation with key decision-makers. Meeting behind closed doors allows you to present the reality of your team’s capacity without putting anyone on the spot. Armed with clear data or project plans, you can often negotiate more realistic timelines or priorities. Another common pressure is when stakeholders create frequent direction changes. Repeated shifts in goals or features will thrash your team and waste energy. This often reflects deeper issues with strategy, alignment, and communication. However, you may not have time for a complete overhaul of your planning processes, and you still need a way to prevent thrash. A short-term fix is to set firm near-term milestones or “freeze” dates, after which any changes must go through a formal triage process. This ensures that if changes are necessary, they follow a transparent, deliberate sequence rather than blindsiding. After the freeze, broader project changes can be considered. Ultimately, I see my responsibility as a leader as fostering an environment where my team can perform at a high level, stay motivated, and avoid burnout. Part of a leader's role is to protect their team’s capability and long-term health. There will always be sprints and times when you need to push, but you also need to consider the long view and put on the brakes when required. People who feel supported are more productive, more creative, and likely to stay engaged.

Failing is learning, and to be a great BA, you will need to fail at times. One of my pivotal learnings was about the level of detail I was working at. I was asked to draw up the as-is and to-be process models for a project. At the end of the same day, the leader who requested it wondered what was taking so long, so I showed her what I had and where I needed more information. She looked puzzled, took a deep breath, and asked me to work at a much higher level. She didn't think we needed all the detail I had included. We had a meeting the next day with a very senior leader and only one hour to present the solution concept and get funding for the project. She explained that this senior leader would not want the details; he needed to see the vision clearly without them. I really struggled with this. In my mind, the decision diamonds and details were absolutely critical to the process. However, the leader I worked with had the patience to coach me through it. She understood where I was coming from and also explained the leader's mindset: he needed to see the big picture, not the details. I begrudgingly redid the process models at a higher level, not fully understanding at the time. Then we went into the meeting and watched my leader present the project to the senior leader. Within 20 minutes, the senior leader approved the funds and asked us all to grab lunch with him. It then clicked! Watching the senior leader digest the high-level information, listening to his questions, and understanding his vision and how the project aligned with it gave me the insight I needed. I finally understood the importance of adjusting the level of detail. I was forever changed! Are you paying attention to the clues on what level of detail to work at? #businessanalysis #agileBA #projectmanagement #productmanagement #businessanalyst #SoftwareDesign #batraining

Want to ruin a project fast? Put a PM and Superintendent at odds. But when they’re aligned? You get magic ✨ • Seamless execution • Less chaos and finger-pointing • And a team that clicks Here are 10 powerful lessons and realizations that have helped me build that kind of partnership: 1️⃣ The Superintendent and PM relationship is CRITICAL. Nothing destroys a project faster than when your PM and Supt aren’t on the same page. It’s like trying to raise kids when Mom and Dad aren’t getting along—it’s impossible. This relationship MUST work for the project to succeed. 2️⃣ Intentional Check-ins Work Wonders Go for a walk. Grab lunch. Sit down for a real conversation. Building a personal connection leads to a strong professional relationship. 3️⃣ Give Without Expecting Anything in Return Give respect. Give trust. Give time. True collaboration starts when both people stop keeping score. And if you want to go deeper, try this: - Understand each other's DISC profile. - Match the moment, not the mirror. - Ask how you can support each other. 4️⃣ Plan together. Visually. Get out of your heads and into the same plan. Whether it’s a whiteboard or a digital platform, build the plan side-by-side—and stick to it together. Outbuild is a no-brainer for this. One place for everything: schedule, lookahead, weekly work plan, constraints, and analytics 🙏 5️⃣ Get crystal clear on roles. What are you owning? What are they owning? Then back each other up when it counts. 6️⃣ One Team, One Voice Make key decisions together. Back each other in front of the team. Disagree in private. Align in public. 7️⃣ Track Every Change and Decision Who said what, when, and what changed? Clarity = accountability. 8️⃣ Support Each Other’s World. Superintendents: Make sure PMs have what they need to move the paper (contracts, change orders, and pay apps). PMs: Make sure Supers have what they need to move the dirt (material, RFIs, and submittals). 9️⃣ Stay Three Steps Ahead—together. Anticipate problems before they happen and take proactive steps to prevent them. Superintendent focus (1-3 weeks out): • Equipment • Materials • Manpower • Prerequisite work • Inspections • Space • Layout Project Manager focus (3-6 weeks out): • Submittals • Fabrication • RFIs • Change Order Approvals • Approvals • Coordination The best duos build lookaheads together—and use them to stay out of each other’s blind spots. 🔟 Continuously Improve the Relationship Drop the ego. Ask each other: • “What’s one thing I could do better?” • “What do you need more of from me?” Remember: The strength of the relationship between the PM and Superintendent directly influences the success of a project.

I spent my 30s managing enterprise IT projects. Here’s what I wish I knew at 29. 1/ Getting teams to simply talk is most of the battle. 2/ Getting sign-off (actual sign-off) on scope will save your bacon. 3/ The right time to think about risks is before you notice problems. 4/ No one is thinking about your project as much as you are. (/should be) 5/ When you have to ask ‘whose job is that?’, it’s probably your job. 6/ If someone asks you if you can do something ‘just this once’ it’s probably their job. 7/ If you do something once, it will be expected for every project in perpetuity. 8/ Understanding *why* someone is making an unusual request will give you insights. 9/ Seeing into the future is a superpower developed through experience. 10/ Senior PMs have good stories. Ask them to share. 11/ Every exec has (at least) two tones. The one they use among piers, and the one they’ll use 1:1. Don’t be startled. 12/ The first step in planning should be to define what you’ll do when things don’t go to plan. 13/ Planning is useful only if that plan quickly evolves into actual work. 14/ Repetition in meetings helps define expectations. Expectations help with accountability. Accountability is how you influence without authority. 15/ Holding people accountable—without being a jerk—is how you preserve relationships. 16/ Don’t ask if something is ‘in progress’. Ask ‘how much work is left’. Use percentages. 17/ Budget more time than you need. Then push hard to use less time than budgeted. 18/ Expect things to go sideways so you’re never surprised--and so you're always ready to act. 19/ Don’t burn bridges. Assume you’ll have another project with them. 20/ Trust is the single most valuable currency in project management. What are your lessons learned?  ____ 👋 Follow me Timothy Morgan for more about enterprise project management.

I had a great time working with a major cultural institution last month. Their development team was struggling with prospect management, and we made some big breakthroughs. Here are 5 game-changing takeaways I've added to my swipe file from this experience: 1. The 80/20 rule is dead. Welcome to the 95/5 reality. In today's philanthropy landscape, we found that 95% of major gifts come from just 5% of donors. This means hyper-focusing your efforts is more crucial than ever. 2. Relationship velocity trumps relationship longevity. Controversial, I know. But we discovered that the speed at which you deepen relationships often matters more than how long you've known a prospect. One team member secured a 7-figure gift from a donor they'd only known for 3 months! 3. Behavior beats demographics. We shifted focus from traditional wealth indicators to behavioral signals. Guess what? Engagement levels and specific interactions were far more predictive of giving potential than net worth alone. 4. The "rule of 7" is now the "rule of 12". In this noisy world, it takes more touchpoints to move a prospect to a gift. We found that meaningful cultivation now requires an average of 12 personalized interactions. 5. Cross-departmental collaboration is non-negotiable. We broke down silos between development, programs, and leadership. The result? A 40% increase in qualified prospects identified through internal networks. Here's the kicker: implementing these strategies led to a 28% increase in major gift revenue within just one quarter. But let's be real - change isn't easy. We faced resistance, especially around point #2. It challenged long-held beliefs about donor cultivation. So, I'm curious: Which of these takeaways resonates most with your experience? Which one makes you raise an eyebrow? If you found these insights valuable, please share this post. Let's elevate our entire profession by spreading innovative practices! P.S. Want to dive deeper into any of these strategies? Drop a comment, and I'll expand on it in a future post.

When a misaligned project team succeeds, it’s an accident. Without alignment — that is, a shared understanding and commitment — team members work at cross-purposes and doom projects to failure. Unfortunately, it’s an easy trap to fall into. When project managers simply assume their team is aligned, or when they accept head-nodding and verbal confirmations as proxies for actual alignment, the risk of failure increases dramatically. When I served as a manufacturing plant manager, I put a project team together to figure out how to increase throughput on a production line. Not long after, throughput had increased by nearly 9%, but yield had decreased by nearly 4%, increasing our costs and canceling out all the gains. The words “I thought that’s what you wanted” still ring in my ears. The fact that the team had decreased overall performance was my fault. I didn’t clarify objectives to ensure a thorough understanding of acceptable trade-offs. I learned that ambiguity was always my fault and could quickly compound into further misalignment. In a world in which projects have become more emergent, project managers need to ensure alignment — not wait for a lagging indicator to reveal that the team doesn’t actually have a shared commitment and understanding. Here are five questions every project manager should periodically ask their teams to create and maintain alignment: 1. What is your understanding of the project? When you achieve shared understanding, or cognitive alignment, you reduce the unit costs of making decisions, accelerate execution, and remove unforced human error. 2. What concerns do you have? To keep the team aligned, you need to pay close attention to every form of data. Never assume that concerns will find you. Go find them. 3. How do you see your role? When team members don’t have a clear understanding of how their role contributes to the project, they get off track or disengage. Don’t assume role clarity — verify it. 4. What do you need? This question requires the individual to think through the personal, tactical, cultural, and strategic implications of any change in project requirements. 5. How would you describe your current commitment to the project? This last question gives the individual an opportunity to share their commitment as a snapshot in time, including caveats, contingencies, dependencies, concerns, and limitations.

There are two types of projects: The ones that fail spectacularly. And the ones that fail quietly. After 10+ years leading projects, I've learned: Success isn't delivering perfectly. It's choosing how you'll fail. Because something will always go wrong: • The requirements will shift • The resources will vanish • The timeline will compress • The unexpected will happen The difference between good and great project managers? Good PMs try to prevent all failure. Great PMs decide which failures they can live with. I once had a CIO ask me: "Will this project be successful?" My answer: "It depends on how we define success." He looked confused. So I laid out three scenarios: • On time, on budget, reduced scope • Full scope, extended timeline, same budget • Full scope, on time, increased budget "Pick your failure mode," I said. He chose option 1. That project is now considered one of our biggest "successes" because we deliberately chose how to fail. No one teaches this in PM courses. No certification covers "strategic disappointment management." But it's the secret to sanity in this profession. Perfect projects don't exist. Perfect trade-off decisions do. → What's a "failure" you've strategically accepted to ensure overall project success?"

I got a meeting invite at 4:53 pm on a Friday. "Quick project sync Monday at 7 am?" My calendar was packed until Thursday. Here's what I learned about saying no as a PM... Most project managers think they have to say yes to everything. Every stakeholder request. Every "urgent" meeting. Every scope change. I used to be that guy. Burned out. Projects failing. Then a director told me, "Your job isn't to please everyone. It's to deliver success." Now, when someone asks for something that hurts the project: "I can't fit this without pushing our deadline. Which do you prefer?" "That's outside our sprint. Let's talk next week." "We need to focus on these deliverables. Can we revisit after our milestone?" The magic? Explain the trade-off. People respect boundaries when they understand the reasons behind them. 20 years managing projects taught me that you can't save a project by saying yes to everything. But you certainly can kill one that way. Say no. Protect the scope. Deliver what matters.

Reviewing the year in #amazondays, my highest email open rate: "I wasted $3M and 2 years ignoring internal customers" 4 #takeaways: 1) beyond external customers, who will be affected by the change required to make your project a success? 2) how do they feel the project will affect their team and their career? 3) can you adapt your solution to lessen their fears and increase their career benefits? 4) whom should you actively work with on the solution, and whom should you keep informed?

The first project I managed had an 18-month timing extension And it was because of me. 😱 In my first ever project, I made assumptions, based on other, similar projects, without taking into account the differences of THIS project. Because of this, we had: > An 18-month timing extension > A budget that doubled overnight > 2x as much work as was originally planned for I'd like to say that we found ways to save money and time. But we didn't. We couldn't. My mistake took a potential 24-month project and extended it to almost 4 years. Couple of key 🔑 points here: 1. Evaluate assumptions prior to a project - I didn't 2. Get sponsor approval on your project charter - I didn't 3. Report on progress for your project regularly - I didn't Any one of these would've saved me time and the organization 💸 So learn from me. It'll save you a headache later.